Imperial Guardsman 1799–1815

Osprey Warrior #22

by Philip J. Haythornthwaite, Richard Hook (Illustrator)

Napoleon's Imperial Guard was one of the most famous military formations in history. The Imperial Guard could perform ceremonial duties as well as any, but it was primarily as an élite combat formation of the army that it excelled. Although it would expand to represent a considerable portion of France's military establishment, it remained Napoleon's personal guard during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) and was accorded care and attention which set its members above the rest of the army. In this book, Philip Haythornthwaite examines their lives, organisation and privileges, paying particular attention to how their experience differed from those of the regular French line units.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, France, Military History

64 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1997

About the author

Philip J. Haythornthwaite (born 1951) is an internationally respected and prolific author and historical consultant specializing in military history, uniforms and equipment. Whilst his main area of research is the Napoleonic Wars, his impressive list of publications covers a much wider range of periods from the English Civil War until WWI.

Reviews

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short introduction to Napoleon's legendary Imperial Guard. Severly limited by space limitations, this little volume provides short overview of Guard's expansion from couple of battalions to a powerful corps and even shorter descriptions of individual units. Rest of the volume is commited to uniformology details. The quality of graphics material is, as almost always in case of publications from Osprey, top notch. However, in this particular case I'm not convinced that the dynamic topics in several of color plates really were the best choice for this particular volume. More static, detailed pictures displaying details of the uniforms would probably be better, considering the material in this volume.

Overall, I'd consider this volume first and foremost a reference work on Guard's uniforms.